Ning Meilan

Meilan here. Welcome to the site office. I treat every game as a new section of line: survey first, then lay the track, then clear the next train through. Sit down, set your pieces on the right-of-way, and we will see who commissions the final section on schedule.

Meilan (Ning Meilan) is a 41-year-old high-speed rail engineer from China, raised in a small Zhuang village in the karst country of western Guangxi. She trained in civil engineering in Nanning and has spent fifteen years surveying, aligning, and commissioning new rail sections across southern China, including tunnel-and-viaduct stretches through her home region. Between site visits she coaches a small cohort of young engineers and plays chess on her phone during long sleeper-train rides between projects. Her estimated rating is 986, which makes her an improving beginner. She recognises simple tactics one move deep but still drops pieces in messy positions and has no real opening knowledge, so her chess is casual play picked up on the road rather than the result of study. Her lucky charm is a brass surveyor's plumb bob clipped inside her hard hat. Against Meilan, expect an eager, attacking game that keeps the position tense and sometimes leaves a piece unprotected along the way.